Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

their gret herds into the coi.nmon pasturage. They used their political power to suppress the popular demands for a redivision of land and for a I.naxii.num limit or landed wealth. Gradually they established ownership in severalty and fortified it by law. Then they sucked up the small estates and undermined the sturdy peasantry of Italy which had ruade Roi.ne great. Six persons at one rime owned the whole province of Africa. The great historian of Romne sums up the pernicious effects of this system in the terse sentence, LatiJundia perdidere Romain, "the great estates have ruined Rome." This system, which was the result of the ruthless displacement of public rights by the strong and one chier cause for the decay of Rorne, was, of course, embodied in Romnan law. That body of law was the product of a refined civilization, and in precision and subtlety was far superior to anything the rnedioeval nations could produce. For this reason, and because it always I.nagnified the powers of the ruling class, it was profoundly influential in the later development of law. Thus the conception of property rights which had helped to kill the Empire passed to other peoples and ever)'here strengthened the hands of the strong and limited the communal rights over the land. It was as if a rug of exquisite weave had been taken from some village devastated by cholera and had been carried with its deadly infection to another city. Out national homestead system was like the old village commune in allotting to every one who asked for it in good faith a sufficient portion of land for the support of his family. The land set aside foi the support if the public schools and the fund acciuing fiom the sale of public lands were further communistic features. The salutary element in our systenl was not so much that the owner owned his land so absolutely, but that the land was so evenly distributed among the people and was so accessible to ail who were able to use it. But now that our free lands are almost exhausted, we have corne to the point where the element of injustice in the system will begin to menace us. The first comers are well placed; but how about those who press up hungry through our ports and through the gates of birth? They will have the bitter cry of Esau when the blessing had been given to Jacob and nothing was left for him. Those who have the soil, have that and their bodies to work it. Those who have no soil, have only their bodies, and they must work for the others to get bread. They are the disinherited children of our nation. Of course in practice many who now own land will lose it, and many who now have none will secure it. But the land henceforth belongs to a limited number, not merely for use, but for complete possession, and the ever increasing remnant will have no right in it, nor income from it. Wha._kt God gave for the support of ail, will be the special privilege of some. Farm-land will more and more corne to have a monopoly value. As land grows dear, it will become harder for a young man without capital to secure his first foothold. He will have to mortgage himself heavily or becorne a tenant. There will be two layers of population drawing their living from the land,— those who own the land and those who till it. Our farmers will become peasants. Their prosperity, their hopefulness and moral vigor, will decline, and therewith the moral strength of our nation will be indefinitely diminished. As the monopoly value of farm-land increases, it will be a more profitable form of investment for the huge industrial capital anxiously seeking investment. Out rich men will become large owners of agricultural lands. In rime we shall have three layers of population on the land, as in England and Eastern Germany, —the great proprietor, the tenant fariner, and the agricultural laborer,- and that means poverty and ignorance in the country. This may seem a far-fetched fear to some, just as thirty years ago it seemed an idle fear that out great corporations might corne to shackle out political democracy. But coinmon sense and the experience of other nations teach a lesson plain enough to all except that not infrequent class which will learn only in the dear school of experience. Already thousands of out best young farmers are passing over out northwestern boundary to Canada to escape the conditions. If they have the choice between cheap land and loyalty to their country, they choose the cheap land. Already the current of immigration, which no longer nds a ready outlet to the land, is choking our great cities. Already the industrial laboring class is gasping under an increased pressure because the automatic outlet of the workers to the land is being stopped. Yet we are only at the beginning of things. The situation clamors for suflîicient moral foresight to avoid the fate of Italy, Spain, or Ireland. The farmers ever cling with the grip of desperation to the land, like an unweaned child toits mother's breast. But when they have once been forced from it into the city, itis exceedingly hard to plant them on the soil once more. An agricultural population is hard to recreate. Yet without a sound agricultural population a nation declines in economic ability and in moral resourceful-

In the matter of ordinary agricultural land the monopo listic element inhering in private ownership has not yet ruade itself felt. But throughout our country those locations which give the access to special opportunities are rapidly being absorbed. The most beautiful locations along our seashore and on our lakes and rivers are bought up, and the people are fenced out from natural beauty and pleasure. The water rights on which great cities depend for lire have to be jealously guarded against hands itching to get at them. The franchises by which the transportation of men, of freight, of gas, of electricity, is ruade possible, all rest on the grant of exceptional land rights. The anthracite mines are a striking demonstration of the effect of giving public rights into the absolute ownership of individuals or corporations. The coal stored in the cellar of our great American tenement was intended by its builder for the use of all. A few vigorous boys have secured the key to the cellar on the understanding that they would fetch the coal up for the rest. But they now claim that the entire supply is their own, and charge the tenants not only for the service of hoisting it up, but for the coal itself. They are using the key not only to get coal out, but to keep it in. The most glaring evils of our land system are round in 6ur cities. City land represents an opportunity to live and to make a living. Its value is created by the community that throngs over and around it. The more wealthy and moral the neighborhood, the more valuable the land. The value of an empty city lot is wholly a social product; the value of an improved lot is partly a social and partly a personal product. Moreover, additional value is created by the pressure of want. The more numerous the people, the greater the need of a place on which to lire and breathe. Space is as much a necessity of lire as air and water. People may perish for the lack of it. Hence they will pay heavily for the use of it. Thus the community, both by its labors and by its needs, creates an increasing value for city land. But out laws give this social product away to individuals. This encourages speculation in land. Men buy up land with the hope that its value will increase without their labor. If their forecast proves false, they surfer impoverishment or bankruptcy. If it proves correct, they have an unearned gain, like a shrewd card-player. In either case the process is demoralizing for the speculator. It is far worse for the people. The naturally high price of city land is further enhanced by the artificial pressure of speculation. Around all out cities lies a ring of unused land held with the hope of a fise. The growing population either has to pay the price demanded, or crowd closer inside of the ring, or use its money and its precious time in travelling daily beyond the ring. If the city enjoys a rapid growth, rents and land prices fise, the landowners absorb a large part of the increase in wealth, and the boom is choked. The crowding of the cities increases the expenses for tire protection, police, and sanitation. It is responsible for many of the most deadly diseases, especially tuberculosis. It is also responsible for the moral deterioration accompanying the tenement bouse and the street life of the cities. The ramifications of these demoralizing effects are almost endless. A boy dug a lot of angleworms and kept them in a small amount of earth in a tin can. After some days he returned to the neglected worms and found that most of them had died in their crowding, a few still lived limp and discolored, and maggots infested the rotting mass. Here were organism taken out of their natural surroundings, in which they would have maintained their cleanliness and health, and crowded to their death. The parable is plain. The values thus created by society and absorbed by individuals are enormous. An eminent and very conservative economist 1 estimates that the unearned increment in Berlin during the last fifty years certainly amounted to $500,o00,000 or $75o,ooo,ooo. Rental values in London increased in 1871- 1891 from 24,000,000 pounds to almost 40,0o0,00o, and about 7,15o,ooo pounds of this was unearned increase. The total of this for twenty years would be equal to the entire estimated wealth of Germany. Owing to the immense growth of our country, and the still more immense growth of our cities, this process has gone on faster in the United States than anywhere èlse. Successful land speculation has formed the nucleus of very many of out large fortunes. Out cities are poor, unclean, always pressing against the limits of indebtedness, and laying heavy burdens of taxation on the producing classes. At the saine time these enormous Yalues pass to individuals who have only contributed a fractional part to their creation. There is a deep-rooted injustice here which must impress any one who reflects upon it and whose judgment is not clouded by profit derived from the system. This does not, however, imply that those who profit by it are morally guilty. They may or may not be. Few as yet recognize any wrong in it. Law and custom sanction it. Even those who see the wrong are scarcely able to withdraw from it. They, too, need land to accomplish anything and must hold it in the  Schmoller, "Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre," II. 450.

established ways. But poison is poison, even if it is supposed to be a necessary food or drink. Slavery once had the sanction of human and divine law. It may be that the day will corne when any one claiming exclusive property right in land will be asked, like the slaveholder in Vermont, to "show a bill of sale signed by the Almighty." The moral problem to be solved by us is how to safeguard the rights of the individual holder of the land who bas increased its value by his labor and intelligence, and yet to extract for the community the value which the community creates. The latter right is now obscured and disregarded, and many of the most destructive and menacing evils of our civilization are directly or indirectly traceable to this legalized method of disinheriting the community, t From an economic point of view all human history bas turned on the possession of the land and its privileges. The conflicts of nation with nation have been like contests of herds for grazing ground. The conflicts of class with class have been struggles for equal rights on the grazing ground. While agriculture was the chier source of wealth, the burning social question was how to counteract the tendency toward the aggregation of land in a few hands. The intense social struggles of the Greek republics turned largely on the redistribution of the communal land. Whcre approximate equality was maintained, political liberty and eflïciency continued. The contrary meant a decay of liberty and intelligence in the mass of the people, and finally death. Political power was always desired and used to secure special control over the natural t The brilliant books of Henry. George, "Social Problems," are still worth reading. rtever been answered.

"Progress and Poverty " and In lais main contentions he has resources. Land robbery on a large scale has been the sin of the mighty. In 19o 4 the Czar gave command to add certain state forests to his private possessions. They were valued at a hundred million rubles. He paid three hundred thousand. 1 The church and monastery lands which were "secularized" during the Reformation vere the property of the people, held in trust by the Church. If they had been devoted to other public service, they might have endowed a wonderful system of education or freed Germany and England forever from the need of paying taxes. Instead they were seized by the possessing classes. In Germany they strengtbened despotic power. In England they laid the foundation for the wealth of the great aristocratic families to this day. No nation can allow its natural sources of wealth to be owned by a limited and diminishing class without suffering political enslavement and poverty. Our system tends that way. "The abolition of private property in land in the interest of society is a necessity." 2

In the aicultural stage of society the chier means of enrichment was to gain control of large landed wealth; the chier danger to the people lay in losing control of the eat agricultural means of production, the land. Since the industrial revolution the man-ruade machinery of production has assumed an importance formerly un'known. The factories, the machines, the means of transportation, the money to finance eat undertakings, are fully as important in the modern process of production as the land from which the

 The Outlook, March 19, 19o4, p. 692.  Rodbertus and Adolf Wagner in their edition of "Rau's Lehrbuch der Nafional6konomie."

raw material is drawn. Consequently the chief way to enrichment in an industrial community will be the control of these factors of production; the chief danger to the people will be to lose control of the instruments of industry. That danger, as we saw in our brief sketch of the industrial revolution, was immediately realized in the most sweeping measure. The people lost control of the tools of industry more completely than they ever lost control of the land. Under the old system the worl'nan owned the simple tools of his trade. To-day the working people have no part nor lot in the machines with which they work. In capitalistic production there is a co6peration between two distinct groups: a small group which owns all the material factors of land and machinery; a large group which owns nothing but the personal factor of human labor power. In this process of cooperation the propertyless group is at a fearful disadvantage. No attempt is ruade to allot to each workman his share in the profits of the joint work. Instead he is paid a fixed wage. The upward movement of this wage is limited by the productiveness of his work; the downward movement of it is limited only by the willingness of the workman to work at so low a return. His willingness will be determined by his needs. If he is poor or if he has a large family, he can be induced to take less. If he is devoted to his family, and if they are sick, he may take still less. The less he needs, the more he can get; the more he needs, the less he will get. This is the exact opposite of the principle that prevails in family life, where the child that needs most care gets most. In our family life we have solidarity and happiness; in out business life we bave individualism and- well, hOt exactly happiness.

The statistics of wages corne with a shock to any one read. ing them with an active imagination. In my city of Rochester the average wage for males over sixteen reported by the United States Census of 9oo was $48o.5 o a year and for females $267.Io. I do not know how accurate that was. It hardly matters. Fifty dollars one way or the other would mean a great deal to the families affected, but it would not change the total impression of pitiable inadequacy. But the real wages are not measured by dollars and cents, but by the purchasing power of the money. That the necessaries of lire have risen in price in recent years is familiar enough to every housekeeper. Wages, too, have risen in some trades. Very earnest efforts have been ruade by experts to prove that the rise in wages has kept pace with the rise in prices, but with dubious results. 1)un's Review some rime ago compared the prices of 35 ° staple commodities in July I, I897, and December I, x9ox, and found that $oI 3 in I9oi would buy no more than $7a4 in x897. Hence if wages had remained apparently stationary, they had actually declined. The purchasing power of the wages determines the health and comfort of the workingrnan and his family. It does not decide on the justice of his wage. That is determined by comparing the total product of his work with the share paid to him. The effectiveness of labor has increased immensely since the advent of the machine. The wealth of the industrial nations consequently has grown in a degree unparalleled in history. The laborer has doubtless profited by this in common with all others. He enjoys luxuries that were beyond the reach of the richest in former times. But the justice of out system will be proved only if we can show that the wealth, comfort, and security of the average workingman in 19o6 is as much greater than that of the average worldngman in 176o as the wealth of civilized humanity is now greater than it was in 176o. No one will be bold enough to assert it. The bulk of the increase in wealth bas gone to a limited class who in various ways bave been strong enough to take it. Wages have advanced on foot; profits bave taken the Limited Express. For instance, the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission of June, 19o2, stated that from 1896-19o2 the average wages and salaries of the railway employees of out country, 1,2oo, ooo men, had increased from $55 °to $580, or rive per cent. During the saine period the net earnin of the owners had increased from $377,ooo,ooo to $61o,ooo, ooo, or sixty-two per cent. Thorold Rogers, in his great work "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," says: "It may well be the case, and there is every reason to fear it is the case, that there is collected a population in our great tov«ns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in England and Wales six centuries ago; but whose condition is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless, than those of the peasant serfs of the Middle Ages or the meanest drudges of the mediœeval cities." If the celebrated saying of John Stuart Mill is true, that "it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet ruade have lightened the day's toil of any human being," it means that the achievements of the human mind have been thwarted by human injustice. Our blessings bave failed to bless us because they were not based on justice and solidarity.

The existence of a large class of population without property rights in the material they work upon and the tools they work with, and without daim to the profits resulting from their work, must have subtle and far-reaching effects on the character of this class and on the moral tone of the people at large. 1 A man's work is hot only the price he pays for the right to fill his stomach. In his work he expresses himself. It is the output of his creative energy and his main contribution to the common life of mankind. The pride which an artist or professional man takes in his work, the pleasure which a housewife takes in adorning her home, afford a satisfaction that ranks next to human love in delightsomeness. One of the gravest accusations against our industrial system is that it does not produce in the common man the pride and joy of good work. In many cases the surroundings are ugly, depressing, and coarsening. Much of the stuff manufactured is dishonest in quality, made to sell and not to serve, and the making of such cotton or wooden lies must react on the morals of every man that handles them. There is little opportunity for a man to put his personal stamp on his work. The medioeval craftsman could fise to be an artist by working well at his craft. The modern factory hand is not likely to develop artistic gifts as he tends his machine. Itis a common and true complaint of employers that their men take no interest in their work. But why should they? What motive bave they for putting love and care into their work? It is not theirs. Christ spoke of the difference between the hireling shepherd who flees and the owner who I See the admirable book by ohn Graham Brooks, «The Social Unrest. »

Ioves the sheep. Our system has made the immense majority of industrial workers mere hirelings. If they do conscicntious work nevertheless, itis a splcndid tribute to human rectitude. Slavery was cheap labor; it was also dcar labor. In ancient Rome the slaves on the country estates were -*o wsteful that only the strongest and crudest tools could be given them. The more the wage worker approaches their condition, the more will the employer confront the same problem. The finest work is done only by free minds who put love into their work because itis their own. When a »vorkman becomes a partner, he "hustles" in a new spirit. Even the small bonus distributed in profit-sharing experiments has been found to increase the carefulness and willingness of the men to such an extent that the bonus did not diminish the profits of the employers. The lowest motives for work are the desire for wages and the fear of losing them. Yet these are almost the only motives to which our system appeals. It does not even hold out the hope of promotion, unless a man unites managing ability to his workmanship. The economic loss to the community by this paralysis of the finer springs of human action is beyond computation. But the moral loss is vastly more threatening. The fear of losing his job is the workrnan's chief incentive to work. Our entire industrial lire, for employer and employee, is a reign of fear. The average workingman's family is only a few weeks removed from destitution. The dread of want is always over them, and that is worse than brief rimes of actual want. Itis often said in defence of the wages system that while the workl-nan does not share in the hope of profit, neither is he troubled by the danger of loss; he gets his wage even if the shop is running ata loss. Not for any length of time. His form of risk is the danger of being out of work when work grows slack, and when his job is gone, all his resources are gone. In rimes of depression the misery and anxiety among the working people are appalling; yet periodical crises hitherto have been an unavoidable accompaniment of our speculative industry. The introduction of new machinery, the reorganization of an industry by a trust, the speeding of machinery which makes fewer men necessary, the competition of cheap immigrant labor, all combine to make the hold of the working classes on the means of life insecure. That workingrnen ever dare to strike work is remarkable testimonv to the economic pressure that impels them and to the capacity of sacrifice for connon ends among them. While a workman is in his prime, he is always in danger of losing his job. When he gets older, he is almost certain to lose it. The pace is so rapid that only supple limbs can keep up. Once out of a job, it is hard for an elderly man to get another. Men shave clean to conceal gray hairs. They are no longer a crown of honor, but an industrial handicap. A man may have put years of his life into a business, but he has no clafin on it at the end, except the feeble claire of sympathetic pity. President Eliot thinks that he has a just but unrecognized claire because he has helped to build up the goodwill of the business. There is a stronger claire in the fact that the result of his work has never been paid to him in full. If, for instance, a man has produced a net value of $800 a year and has received $500 a year, $300 annually stand to his credit in the sight of God. These dividends with compound interest would amount to a tidy sure at the end of a terre of years and ought to suffice to employ him at his old wages even if his productive capacity declines, t But at present, unless his employer is able and willing to show him charity, or unless by unusual thrift he has managed to save something, he becomes dependent on the faithfulness of his children or the charity of the public. In England a very large proportion of the aged working people finally "go on the parish." In Germany they have a socialist system of insurance for old age. The fact that so few Germans have emiated in recent years is probably due in part to the hope held out by this slight capitalization of their life's labor. We are hot even thinking of such an institution in America. Fear and insecurity weigh upon our people increasingly, and break down their nerves, their mental buoyancy, and their character. This constant insecurity and fear pervading the entire condition of the working people is like a corrosive chemical that disintegrates their self-respect. For an old man to be able to look about him on the farm or business he bas built up by the toil of his life, is a profound satisfaction, an antidote to the sense of declining strength and adual failure. For an old man after a lifetime of honest work to bave nothing, to amount to nothing, tobe turned off as useless, and to eat the bread of dependence, is a pitiable humiliation. I can conceive of nothing so crushing to all proper pride as for a workingman to be out of work for weeks, offering his work and his body and soul atone place after the other, and tobe told again and again that nobody has any use for such a man as he. It is no wonder that men take to drink when t This proportion of wages paid and wages retained is simply assumed for the sake of concreteness in the argument. The actual proportion, of course, will vary with the "profits" of a concern.

they are out of work; for drink, at least for a while, creates illusions of contentment and worth. The Recessional of Alcohol bas the refrain, "Let us forger." Every great strike, every industrial crisis, pushes some men over the line of selfrespect into petty thievery and vagrancy, and over the gate to the long road of hoboism is written, "Leave all hope behind, all ye that enter here." To accept charity is at first one of the most bitter experiences of the self-respecting workingman. Some abandon their families, go insane or commit suicide rather than surrender the virginity of their independence. But whcn they have once learned to depend on gifts, the parasitic habit of mind grows on them, and it becomes hard to wake them back to self-support. They have eaten the food of the lotos-eaters and henceforth "surely, surely slurnber is more sweet than toil." It would be a theme for the psychological analysis of a great novelist to describe the slow deoo-radation of the soul when a poor man becomes a pauper. During the great industrial crisis in the 9o's I saw good men go into disreputable lines of employment and respectable widows consent to live with men ,ho would support them and their children. One could hear human virtue cracking and crumbling all around. Whenever work is scarce, petty crime is plentiful. But that is only the tangible expression of the decay in the morale of the working people on which statistics can seize. The corresponding decay in the morality of the possessing classes at such a time is another story. But industrial crises are hOt inevitable in nature; they are merely inevitable in capitalism. A similar corrosive influence is the hatred generated by our system. The employees are often hot with smouldering resentment at their treatment by the employers, and the employers are at least warm with annoyance at the organizations of the men, and full of distrust for the honesty and willingness of their helpers. The economic loss to both sides in every strike is great enough, but the loss in human fellowship and kindliness is of far greater moment. It would be far better for a community to lose a million dollars by tire than to lose it by a strike or lockout. The acts of violence committed on both sides, by legalized means on the one, by spontaneous brutality on the other, are only the efflorescence of the inflamed feeling created. And the acute inflammation tends to become chronic. Every animal will fight other animals that trench on its feeding grounds. Every social class in history has used whatever weapons it had—sword, law, ostracism, or clerical anathema— to strike at any other class that endangered its income. Railways use lobbies; their employees use clubs; each uses the weapon that is handy and effective. But it is ail brutalizing and destructive. Strikes are mild civil war, and "war is hell." If our industrial organization cannot evolve some saner method of reconciling conflicting interests than twenty-four thousand strikes and lockouts in twenty years, it will be a confession of social impotence and moral bank_ruptcy, t

It used to be a rine thing to mark how the richer food and The cal « freer life in out couutry increased the stature and beauty of o ri the immigrant familles. America meant a fise in the standard peoi of living, and hence an increase in physical eflîciency. The t Professor N. P. Gilman» "Methods of Industrial Peace," computes the number of strikes, i88i-i9oo, at 22,793, and the lockouts at ioo$. The total number thrown out of work was 6,6io, ooo. The loss to the men was $3o6,683,233; to the employers, $142,659,1o 4.

rapid progress of out country has been due to the wealth of natural resources on the one side and the physical vigor and mental buoyancy of the human resources on the other side. To-day there are large portions of the wage-earning population of which that is no longer true. They are hOt advancing, but receding in stamina, and bequeathing an enfeebled equipment to the next generation. 1 The human animal needs space, air, and light, just like any other highly developed organism. But the competitive necessities of industry crowd the people together in the cities. Land speculation and high car-fares hem them in even where the location of out cities permits easy expansion. High rents mean small rooms. Dear coal means lack of ventilation in winter. Coal-smoke means susceptibility to all throat and lung diseases. The tenement districts of out great cities are miasmatic swamps of bad air, and just as swamps teem with fungous growths, so the bacilli of tuberculosis multiply on the rotting Itmgs of the underfed and densely housed multitudes. The decline in the death-rate with the advance in sanitary science, the sudden drop of the rate after the destruction and rebuilding of slum districts in English cities, 2 prove clearly how preventible a great proportion of deaths are. The preventible decimation of the people is social murder. The human animal needs good food to be healthy, just like a horse or cow. The artificial fise in food prices is at the expense of the vital force of the American people. The larger out cities, the wider are the areas from which their perishable food is drawn and the staler and less nourishing i On this enfire section see Robert Hunter, "Poverty." 2 The reducfion in some cases has been from fifty-five to fourteen pet thousand.

will be the food. Canned goods are a sorry substitute for fresh food. The ideal housewife can make a palatable and nourishing meal from almost anything. But the wives of the workingmen have been working girls, and they rarely have a chance to learn good housekeeping before they marry. Scorching a steak diminishes its nutritive value and the appetite of the eater, and both are essential for nutrition. Poor food and cramped rooms lower the vitality of the people. At the same time the output of vitality demanded from them grows ever greater. Lire in a city, with the sights and sounds, the hurry for trains, the contagious rush, is itself a flaring consumer of nervous energy. The work at the machine is worse. That tireless worker of steel, driven by the stored energy of the sun in forgotten ages, sets the pace for the exhausted human organism that feeds it. The speeding of machines is greater in America than anywhere in the world. Unless the food and housing remain proportionately better, the American workman is drained faster. Immigrants who try to continue the kind of food that kept them in vigor at home, collapse under the strain. Under such a combination of causes the health of the people inevitably breaks down. Improved medical science has counteracted the effects to a large extent, but in spite of all modern progress the physical breakdown is apparent in many directions. Diseases of the nerves, culminating in prostration and insanity; diseases of the heart through overstrain; diseases of the digestion through poor nutrition, haste in mastication, and anxiety; zymotic diseases due to crowding and dirt- all these things multiply and laugh at out curative efforts. Tuberculosis, which might be eradicated in ten years if we had sense, continues to cripple out children, R to snuff out the life of our young men and women in their prime, and to leave the fatherless and mothefless to struggle along in their feebleness. Alcoholism is both a cause and an effect of poverty. The poor take to drink because they are tired, discouraged, and flabby of will, and without more wholesome recreation. When the narcotic has once gained control over them, it works more rapidly with them than with the well fed who work in the open. Tuberculosis and alcoholism are social diseases, degenerating the stock of the people, fostered by the commercial interests of landowners and liquor dealers, thriving on the weak and creating the weak. This condition of exhaustion tends to perpetuate itself. Children are begotten in a state of physical exhaustion. Underfed and overworked women in tenement and factory are nourishing the children in their prenatal lire. During the years when a workinmnan's family is bringing up young children, before their earnings become available, the family is submerged in poverty through these parental burdens, and neither the parents nor the growing children are likely to be well fed and well housed. Very early in lire the children are hitched to the machine for life, and the vitality which ought to build their bodies during the crucial period of adolescence is used up to make goods a little cheaper, or, what is more likely, merely to make profits a little larger. Imagine that any breeder of live stock should breed horses or cows under such conditions, what would be the result in a few generations? Our apple orchards are planted in wide squares, so that every tree has the soil, the air, the sunshine, which it needs. If we planted a dense jungle of trees, we should bave a dwarfed growth, scraggy and thorny, and only here and there a crabbed apple. What harvest of human kind will we have in the broad field of our republic if we plant men in that way? The physical drain of which we have spoken is gradual and slow, and therefore escapes observation and sympathy. But it is the lot of the working people in addition to this to surfer frequent mangling and mutilation. A workman who tends one of our great machines is pitted against a monster of blind and crushing strength and has to be ever alert, like one who enters a cage of tigers. Yet human nature is so constituted that it grows careless of danger which is always near, and cheerfully plucks the beard of death. Unless the machines are surrounded with proper safeguards, they take a large toll of life and limb. The state accident" insurance system in Germany has revealed a terrible frequency of industrial accidents. We have never yet dared to get the facts for out country, except in mining and railroading; but it is safe to say that no country is so reckless of accidents as out own. It is asserted that one in eight of out people dies a violent death. The Interstate Commerce Commission in October, 19o4, stated that 78,152 persons had been killed on the railroads in the previous ten years, and 78,247 had been injured in the single preceding year. Any one who has ever been through a railway accident "knows what a horrible total of bloody and groaning suffering these fio-ures imply. Yet few railways voluntarily introduced automatic car-couplers to lessen one of the most frequent causes of accident. They resisted legislation as long as they could; introduced the automatic couplers as slowly as they could; and are now resisting the introduction of the block system in the saine way. Yet automatic coupling reduced the number of men killed from 433 in 1893 to 167 in 19o2, and the number in jured from II,277 to 2864, in spire of the fact that the total number of employees had greatly increased during these ten years. The saine resistance met the efforts to guard the lives of sailors by the Plimsoll mark. and indeed almost every effort to compel owners to provide safety appliances, or to make them liable for accidents to their servants. It is dividends against human lires. All great corporations have agents whose sole business it is to look after accidents and see that the company suffers as little loss as possible through the claires of the injure& Yet many are injured in railway work and elsewhere because long hours in the service of those same corporations had so worn them down that their mind was numb and they were unable to look out for themselves. I venture to give concreteness to these matters by telling a single case which I followed from beginning to end. An elderly workingman, a good Christian man, was run down by a street car in New York City. His leg was badly bruised. He was taken to an excellent hospital near by. His wife and daughter visited him immediately. After that they had to wait to the regular visiting day. On that day they came to me in great distress and said that he had been sent forward to Bellevue Hospital. I went with them and we found that he had been there only one night, and had again been sent on to the Charity Hospital on Blackwell's Island. At both hospitals they said the case was not serious and they had shifted him to make room for graver cases. The steamer connecting Bellevue and the Island had left on its last trip that day. If the two women had been alone, they would have been helpless in their anxiety till the next day. I got them across. After hours of fear, which almost pros- trated them, we found the old man. He was fairly comfortable and reported that his night at Bellevue had been spent on the floor. A few days later gangrene set in; the leg was twice amputated, and he died. I ara not competent to say if this result was due to neglect or not. I know of other cases in which that first hospital shipped charity patients elsewhere without giving any notice whatever to the relatives. The agent of the street-car company promptly called on the family and offered $ioo in settlemcnt of all damages. I saw the manager on their behalf. He explained courteously that since the case resulted in death, $5oo0 would be the maximum allowed by New York laws, and since the man's earnings had been small and he had but few years of earning capacity before him, the amount of damage allo,«ed by the courts in his case would be slight. The suffering to the affections of the family, did not enter into the legal aspect of the matter. The company paid its counsel by the year. If the family sued and was successful in the lower court, the manager frankly said they would carry it to the higher courts and could wear out the resources of the family at slight expense to the corporation. The president, a benevolent and venerablelooking gentleman, explained to me that the combined distance travelled by their cars daily would reach from New York to the Rocky Mountains. People were constantly being run over, and the company could not afford to be more generous. The widow concluded to submit to the terms offered. The $I00 was brought to her in the usual form of single dollar bills to make it look like vast wealth to a poor person. The daughter suffered very serious organic injury through the shock received when her father had disappeared from the hospital, and this was probably one cause for her death in child-birth several years later. The officers of the hospitals and the officers of the streetrailway company were not bad men. Their point of view and their habits of mind are entirely comprehensible. I feel no certainty that I should hOt act in the saine way if I had been in their place long enough. But the impression remained that our social machinery is almost as blindly cruel as its steel machinery, and that it runs over the life of a poor man with scarcely a quiver. There is certainly a great and increasing body of chronic wretchedness in our wonderful country. It is greatest where our industrial system has worked out its conclusions most completely. Our national optimism and conceit ought hot to blind us longer to the fact. Single cases of unhappiness are inevitable in our frail human life; but when there are millions of them, ail running along well-defined grooves, reducible to certain laws, then this misery is hot an individual, but a social matter, due to causes in the structure of our society and curable only by social reconstruction. We point with pride to the multitude of our charitable organizations. Our great cities have annual directories of their charitable organizations, which state the barest abstract of facts and yet make portly volumes. These institutions'are the pride and the shame of Christian civilization; the pride because we so respond to the cry of suffering; the shame, because so much need exists. They are a heavy financial drag. The more humane our feeling is, the better we shall have to bouse our dependents and delinquents. But those who have had personal contact with the work, feel that they are beating back a swelling ride with feeble hands. With theix best intentions they may be harming men more than helping them. And the misery grows. The incapables increase faster than the population. Moreover, beyond the charity cases lies the mass of wretchedness that spawns them. For every halfwitted pauper in the almshouse there may be ten misbegotten and muddle-headed individuals bungling their work and their life outside. For every person who is officially declared insane, there are a dozen whose nervous organization is impaired and who are centres of further trouble. For every thief in prison there are others outside, pilfering and defrauding, and rendering social life insecure and anxious. Mr. Hunter * estimates that about four million persons are dependent on public relief in the United States; that an equal number are destitute, but bear their rnisery in silence; and that ten million have an income insufficient to maintain them even in a state of physical efficiency to do their work. The methods by which he arrives at these results seem careful and fait. But suppose that he were a million or two out of the way, does that affect the moral challenge of the figures much? Sir Wilfred Lawson told of a test applied by the head of an insane asylum to distinguish the sane from the insane. He took them to a basin of water under a running faucet and asked them to dip out the water. The insane merely dipped and dipped. The sane turned off the faucet and dipped out the test. Is our social order sane?

Approximate equality is the only enduring foundation of The wedge polifical democracy. The sense of equality is the only basis inequ« for Christian morality. Healthful human relations seem to run only on horizontal lines. Consequently true love always seeks to create a level. If a rich man loves a poor girl, he lifts her to financial and social equality with himself. If his love has hot that equalizing power, it is flawed and becomes prostitution. Whcrever husbands by social custom regard their wives as inferior, there is a deep-seated defect in married lire. If a teacher talks down at his pupils, hot as a maturer friend, but with an "I say so," he confines their minds in a spiritual straight-jacket instead of liberating them. Equality is the only basis for true educational influences. Even our instinct of pity, which is love going out to the weak, works with spontaneous strength only toward those of out own class and circlc who bave dropped into misfortune. Business men fecl very differently toward the widow of a business man left in poverty than they do toward a widow of the poorer classes. People of a lower class who demand our hclp are "cases"; people of out own class are folks. The demand for equality is often ridiculed as if it fmplied that all men were to be of identical wealth, wisdom, and authority. But social equality can coexist with the greatest natural differences. There is no more fundamental difference than that of sex, nor a greater intellectual chasm than that between an educa.ted man and his little child, yet in the family all are equal. In a college community there are various gradations of tank and authority within the faculty, and there is a clearly marked distinction between the students and the faculty, but there is social equality. On the other hand, the janitor and the peanut vender are outside of the circle, however important they may be to it. The social equality existing in out country in the past bas been one of the chief charms of life here and of far more practical importance to our democracy than the universal ballot. After a long period of study abroad in my youth I realized on my return to America that life here was far poorer in music, art, and many forms of enjoyment than life on the continent of Europe; but that life tasted better here, nevertheless, because men met one another more simply, frankly, and wholesomely. In Europe a man is always considering just how much deference he must show to those in ranks above him, and in turn noting jealously if those below him are strewing the right quantity of incense due to his own social position. That fundamental democracy of social intercourse, which is one of the richest endowments of our American life, is slipping from us. Actual inequality endangers the sense of equality. The rich man and the poor man can meet on a level if they are old friends, or if they are men of exceptional moral qualities, or if they meet under unusual circumstances that reduce all things to their primitive human elements. But as a general thing they will live different lives, and the sense of unlikeness will affect all their dealings. With women the spirit of social caste seems to be even more fatally easy than with men. It may be denied that the poor in our country are getting poorer, but it cannot well be denied that the rich are getting richer. The extremes of wealth and poverty are much farther apart than formerly, and thus the poor are at least relatively poorer. There is a rich class and a poor class, whose manner of life is wedged farther and farther apart, and whose boundary lines are becoming ever more distinct. The difference in housing, eating, dressing, and speaking would be a sufficient barrier. The dominant position of the one class in industry and the dependence of the other is even more decisive. The owners or managers of industry are rich or highly paid; they have technical knowledge, the will to command, the habits of mind bred by the exercise of authority; they say "Go," and men go; they say "Do this," and an army of men obeys. On the other side is the mass who take orders, who are employed or dismissed at a word, who use their muscles almost automatically, and who have no voice in the conduct of their own shop. These are two distinct classes, and no rhetoric can make them equal. Moreover, such a condition is inseparable from the capitalistic organization of industry. As capitalism grows, it must create a proletariat to correspond. Just as militarism is based on military obedience, so capitalism is based on economic dependence. We hear passionate protests against the use of the hateful word "class" in America. There are no classes in out country, we are told. But the hateful part is not the word, but the thing. If class distinctions are growing up here, he serves his country ill who would hush up the fact or blind the people to it by fine phrases. A class is a body of men who are so similar in their work, their duties and privileges, their manner of lire and enjoyment, that a common interest, coinmon conception of lire, and common moral ideals are developed and cernent the individuals. The business men constitute such a class. The industrial workers also constitute such a class. In old countries the upper class gradually adorned itself with titles, won special privileges in court and army and law, and created an atmosphere of awe and apartness. But the solid basis on which this was done was the feudal control of the land, which was then the great source of wealth. The rest was merely the decorative moss that grows tlp on the rocks of permanent wealth. With the industrial revolution a new source of wealth opened up; a new set of men gained control of it and ousted the old feudal nobility more or less thoroughly. The new aristocracy, which is based on mobile capital, has not yet had time to festoon itself with decorations, but likes to hasten the process by intermarriage with the rellmants of the old feudal nobility. Whether it will ever duplicate the old forms in this country is immaterial, as long as it has the fact of power. In some way the social inequality will find increasing outward expression and will tend to make itself permanent. Where there are actual class differences, there will be a dawning class consciousness, a clear class interest,,and there may be a class struggle. In the past the sympathy between the richer and the poorer members of American society has still run strong. Many rich men and women were once poor and have not forgotten their early struggles and the simple homes of their childhood. As wealth becomes hereditary, there will be more who have never known any life except that of luxury, and have never had any associates except the children of the rich or their servants. Formerly the wealthiest man in a village or town still lived in the sight of all as a member of the community. As the chasm widens, the rich withdraw to their own section of the city; they naturally use means to screen themselves from the intrusive stare of the public which concentrates its gaze on them; they live in a wofld apart, and the mass of the people have distorted ideas about them and little human sympathy for them. There are indications enough how far apart we already are. We have a; new literature of exploration. Darkest Africa and the polar regions are becoming familiar; but we now have intrepid men and women wh« plunge for a rime into the life of the lover classes and return to write books about this unknown race that lives in the next block. It is amazing to note how intelligent men and women of the upper classes bungle in their judgment on the virtues and the vices of the working people, and vice versa. Socialism is coming to be the very life-breath of the intelligent working-class, but if all the members of all the social and literary clubs of a city were examined on socialism, probably two-thirds would fail to pass. Many are still content to treat one of thc great elemental movements of human history as the artificial and transitory misbehavior of a few agitators and their dupes. The inability of both capital and labor to understand the point of view of the other side has been one chier cause of trouble, and almost every honest effort to get both sides together on a basis of equality has acted like a revelation. But that proves how far they have been apart. Individual sympathy and understanding has been our chier reliance in the past for overcoming the differences between the social classes. The feelings and principles implanted by Christianity have been a poverful aid in that direction. But if this sympathy diminishes by the widening of the social chasm, what hope have we? It is true that we have an increasing number who, by study and by personal contact in settlement work and otherwise, are trying to increase that sympathetic intelligence. But it is a question if this conscious effort of individuals is enough to offset the unconscious alienation created by the dominant facts of life which are wedging entire classes apart. Facts and institutions are inevitably followed by theories to explain and justify the existing institutions. In a political democracy we have democratic theories of politics. In a monarchy they have monarchical theories. Wherever inequality has been a permanent situation, theoretical thought has defended it. Aristotle living in a slaveholding society said" "There are in the human species individuals as inferior to others as the body is to the soul, or as animals are to men. Adapted to corporeal labor only, they are incapable of a higher occupation. Destined by nature to slavery, there is nothing better for them to do than to obey." Similarly in feudal society the lord regarded the serf as by nature little different from a beast of burden, and even the serf regarded oppression as a fixed fact in life, like cold and tain. If we allow deep and permanent inequality to grow up in out country, it is as sure as gravitation that hOt only the old democracy and frankness of manners will go, but even the theory of human equality, which bas been part of out spiritual atmosphere through Christianity, will be denied. It is already widely challenged. Any shifting of the economic equilibrium from one class to another is sure to be followed by a shifting of the political equilibrium. If a class arrives at economic wealth, it will gain political influence and some form of representation. For instance, when the cities grew powerful at the close of the Middle Ages, and the lesser nobles declined in power, that fact was registered in the political constitution of the nations. The French Revolution was the demand of the business class to have a share in political power proportionate to its growing economic importance. A class which is economically strong will have the necessary influence to secure and enforce laws which protect its economic interests. In turn, a class which controls legislation will shape it for its own enrichment. Politics is embroidered with patriotic sentiment and phrases, but at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, the economic interests dominate it always. If therefore we have a class which owns a large part of the national wealth and controls nearly all the mobile part of it, it is idle to suppose that this class will hOt see toit that the vast power exerted by the machinery of government serres its interests. And if we have another class which is economically dependent and helpless, it is idle to suppose that it will be allowed an equal voice in swaying political power. In short, we cannot join economic inequality and political equality. As Oliver Crornwell wrote to Parliament, "If there be any one that makes rnany poor to make a few rich, that suits hOt a Commonwealth." The words of Lincoln find a new application here, that the republic cannot be half slave and hall free. The power of capitalism over the machinery of our government, and its corroding influence on the morality of our public servants, has been revealed within recent years to such an extent that it is almost superfluous to speak of it. If any one had foretold ten years ago the facts which are now understood by all, he would have been denounced as an incurable pessimist. Our cities have surrendered nearly all the functions that bring an incorae, keeping only those that deraand expenditure, and they are now so dominated by the public service corporations that it takes a furious spasm of public anger, as in Philadelphia, or a long-drawn battle, as in Chicago, to drive the robbers from their intrenchments in the very citadel of government; and after the victory is won there is absolutely no guarantee that it will be permanent.

There is probably not one of our states which is not more or less controlled by its chief railways. How far our national government is constantly warped in its action, the man at a distance can hardly tell, but the public confidence in Congress is deeply undermined. Even the successful action against the meat-packers and against railway rebates only demonstrated what overwhelming popular pressure is necessary to compel the government to act against these great interests. The interference of iresident Roosevelt in the great coal strike was hailed as a demonstration that the people are still supreme. In fact, it rather demonstrated that the supremacy of the people is almost gone. The country was on the verge of a vast public calamity. A sudden cold snap would have sent Death through our Eastern cities, hOt with his oldfashioned scythe, but with a modern reaper. The President merely undertook to advise and persuade, and was met with an almost insolent rejoinder. Mr. Jacob A. Riis, in his book "Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen," says that the President, when he concluded to interfere, set his face grimly and said: "Yes, I will do it. I suppose that ends me; but it is right, and I will do it." The Governor of Massachusetts afterward sent him "the thanks of every man, woman, and child in the country." The President replied: "Yes, we have put it through. But heavens and earth! It has been a struggle." Mr. Riis says, "It was the nearest I ever knew him to corne to showing the strain he had been under." Now what sinister and ghostly power was this with which the President of out nation had wrestled on behalf of the people, and which was able to loosen even his joints with fear? Whose interests were so inviolable that they took precedence of the safety of the people, so that a common-sense action bv the most august officer of the nation was likely to bring political destruction upon him? To what extent is a power so threatening able to turn the government aside from its functions by silent pressure, so that its fundamental purpose of public service is constantly frustrated? Have we a dual sovereignty, so that out public officers are in doubt whom to obey? Here is another instance showing how political power is simply a tool for the interests of the dominant class. In 89 the Working Women's Society of New York began to agitate for proper sanitary accommodations and seats for the female clerks in the department stores. This sensible bill was annually met and defeated at Albany by a lobby of the retail merchants. In 896 it was at last enacted and the right of inspection and enforcement was given to the local boards of health. For eighteen months it was enforced in New York in the most tyrannical manner to make the law odious. The Tammany mayor then appointed one of the owners of a great department store as president of the Board of Health. This man said that he desired the position partly to quash an indictment against a certain philanthropic enterprise of his and partly to paralyze the Mercantile Inspection Law. The mayor suggested that the necessary appropriation be withheld, and so the law became a dead letter. To secure special concessions and privileges and to evade public burdens have always been the objects for which dominant classes used their political power. For instance, the feudal nobility of France originally held their lands as franchises from the crown, in return for a tax of service, chiefly military, to be rendered to the nation. When the old feudal levies proved inefficient in the Hundred Year'

War with England, a standing army was organized and supported by a money tax. The nobility were thereby relieved from their old obligation of levying and supporting soldiers, yet they successfully evaded their share of the tax. This is merely a sample case. It can safely be asserted that throughout history the strongest have been taxed least, and the weakest most. The same condition prevails in our country. The average homes in the cities are usually taxed to the limit; the most opulent homes, and especially their contents, are taxed lightly. Vacant lots, hcld for speculation, are often flagrantly favored, though they are a public nuisance. In i856 taxes were paid in New York State on $148,473,154 worth of personal property over and above the capital of banks and trust companies. During the following forty years the increase in personal property in the State was immense, yet in i896 the amount found for taxation had increased by only $66,000,000. In that year a study was ruade of Io 7 estates, taken at random in the State of New York and ranging from $54,559 to $3,319,5oo. After the death of the owners these estates disclosed personalty aggregating $2i 5- i32,366; but the year before their deaths the owners had been assessed only $3,819,412 on their personal property. Thirtyfour of them had escaped taxation altogether, t An investigation by Professor E. W. Bemis in Ohio in i9oi showed that while farms and homes were assessed at about sixty per cent of their value, railways vere assessed at from thirty-five per cent down to thirteen per cent of the market value of their stocks and bonds.  The interests which thus evade taxation bave usually been enriched by public gifts, by franchises, mini From an article bv Comptroller Roberts, Forum, Ma3-, 1897.  The Outloek, September 21, 19Ol, p. 15o.

ing rights, water rights, the unearned increment of the land, etc., and yet they allow the public burdens to setfle on the backs of those classes who are already fearfully handicapped. The courts are the instrument by which the organized community exercises its supremacy over the affairs of the individual, and the control of the courts is therefore of vital concern to the privileged classes of any nation. Exemption from the jurisdiction of certain courts which would be troublesome, was a desirable privilege, and both the feudal aristocracy and the clergy had that privilege. To a wide extent the feudal nobles down to our own time had the right of jurisdiction within their own domains, and when they sat as judges, they were not likely to hurt their own interests. The English landowners long ruade the law in Parliament and interpreted it in their courts. The terrible punishments visited, for instance, on poaching are a demonstration how they dealt with offences against their cherished class rights. In our own country ail are equal before the law- in theory. In practice there is the most serious inequality. The right of appeal as handled in our country gives tremendous odds to those who have fmancial staying power. The police court, which is the poor rnan's court, deals with him very summarily. If a rich man and a poor man were alike fined $io for being drunk and disorderly, the equal punishment would be exceedingly unequal. If the poor man is unable to pay the fine, he gets ten days; nothing likely to be inflicted on the rich man for a similar offence would hit him equally hard. To what extent the judges are actually corrupt it is probably impossible to say. We have been trying to keep up our courage amid the general official corruption by asserting that the integrity of the judiciary at least is above reproach. But the only thing that would make them immune to the general disease is the spirit and the tradition of their profession. But class spirit and professional honor are a rather fragile barrier against the terrible temptations which can be offered by the great interests, and when that barrier is once undermined by evil example, it will wash away with increasing speed. Recent revelations bave not been calculated to cheer us. The judge is frequently a successful politician before he sits on the bench. Is the sanctifying power of oflïicial responsibility so great that it will purge out the habits of mind acquired by a successful political career, as politics now goes? At any rate, it is safe to say that the study and practice of the law create an ingrained respect for things as they have been, and that the social sympathies of judges are altogether likely to be with the educated and possessing classes. This inward trend of sympathy is a powerful element in determining a man's judgment in single cases. That a man should be tried by a jury of his peers was so important an historical conquest, because it recognized the bias of class differences and turned it in favor of the accused. Unless a judge is affected by the new social spirit, he is likely to be at least unconsciously on the side of those who have, and this is equivalent to a special privilege granted them by the courts. Connecticut alone, among English-speaking countries, has hitherto permitted the defendant in damage suits to transfer such suits from a jury to a bench of judges. Vhen the constitution of Connecticut was revised in i9o2, it was proposed to make jury trials mandatory in damage suits. The active "corporation group" in the convention bent its chier interest toward the defeat of this proposition. In the experience of corporations i judges must then be more favorably disposed to them thaI juries. The ultimate power on which we stake out hope in our present political decay is the power of public opinion. Whenever some temporary victory bas been scored by the people, the newspapers triumphantly announce that the people are really still sovereign, and that nothing can resist public opinion when once aroused. In reality this sheet anchor of out hope is as dependable as the wind that blows. It takes strenuous efforts to arouse the public. Only spectacular evils are likely to impress it. When it is aroused, it is easily turned against some side issue or some harmless scapegoat. And, like all passions, it is very short-lived and sinks back to slumber quickly. Despotic governments have always trusted in dilatory tactics, knowing well the somnolence of public opinion. The saine policy is adroitly used by those who exploit the people in our country. To this must be added the fact that the predatory interests are tampering with the organs which create public opinion. If public opinion is indeed so great a power, it is not likely that it will be overlooked by those who are so a]ert against all other sources of danger. It will not be denied that some newspapers are directly in the pay of certain interests and are their active champions. It will not be denied that the counting-room standpoint is profoundly influential in the editorial policy of all newspapers, and that large advertisers can muzzle most papers if they are determined on a policy. Not only the editorials are. affected, but the news matter. After the first great election in Chicago in 19o2, in which the people by referendum decided for municipal ownership of street railways and of the gas and electric lighting plants by an astonishing majority, the Associated Press despatches and the great New York dailies were almost or wholly silent on this significant demonstration of public ownership sentiment. After the presidential election of x892, in which the Populist Party played so important a part, I was unable to find any figures on their vote in the New York dailies. The day after the presidential election of 9o4, in which the Socialist vote took its first large leap forward, I travelled through several States, but no paper which I saw contained the statistics of the Socialist vote. The only fact mentioned was that their vote had declined in one or two cities. When the Mercantile Inspection Bill, to which reference was ruade above, was before the New York legislature, one of the most respectable metropolitan newspapers contained frequent articles and interviews opposing the bill from the point of view of the department stores. One of my friends, who championed the bill, spoke to one of his friends on the staff of this paper and asked him in fairness to print an inter'iew on the other side. The man replied, "Certainly, that is only fair, I will go and arrange for it." He returned and said that absolute orders had corne from the counting-room that nothing in favor of the bill was to be printed. Now the justice and efficiency of democratic government depend on the intelligence and information of the citizens. If they are purposely misled by distorted information or by the suppression of important information, the larger jury before which all public causes ha'e to be pleaded is tampered with, and the innermost lire of our republic is in danger. In an ddress before the Nineteenth Century Club in 9o4, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, one of the most eminent

SOCiOlOgists of our country, said: "We are witnessing to-day, beyond question, the decay- perhaps hot permanent, but at any rate the decay— of republican institutions. INo man in his right mind can deny it." We bave, in fact, one kind of constitution on paper, and another system of government in fact. That is usually the way when a slow revolution is taking place in the distribution of political and economic power. The old structure apparently remains intact, but actually the seat of power has changed. The Merovingian kîngs remained kings long after all real power had passed to the Major Domo and they had become attenuated relics. The Senate of Rome and the consuls continued to transact business in the time-hallowed way, though they merely registered the will of the real sovereign. The president of a great university bas predicted that we shall have an emperor within twenty years. We shall probably never bave an emperor, but we may have a chairman of some committee or other, some person hOt even mentioned in any constitution or law, who will be the de ]acto emperor of out republic. INames are trifles. An emperor by any other naine will smell as sweet. The chief of the Roman Empire was called Coesar or Augustus, which happened tobe the names of the men who first concentrated power in that form. When the tottering Empire rested on military force alone, the prefect of the proetorian guard came to be the virtual prime minister, uniting the chier judicial and executive functions in his hands. The boss in American political life is the extra-constitutional ruler simply because he stands for the really dominant powers. The political lire of a nation represents the malmer in which that nation manages its common affairs. It is nota thing apart from the rest of the national lire. It is the direct outgrowth of present forces and realities, somewhat modified by past traditions, and in turn it intensifies the conditions which shape it. The ideal of out government was to distribute political rights and powers equally among the citizens. But a state of such actual inequality has grown up among the citizens that this ideal becomes unworkable. According to the careful calculations of lXlr. Charles B. Spahr, one per cent of the familles in out country held more than half of the aggregate wealth of the country, more than all the rest of the nation put together, t And that was in 189o. Is it likely that this small minority, which is so powerful in possessions, will be content with one per cent of the political power wherewith to protect these possessions? Seven-eighths of the familles held only one-eighth of the national wealth. Has it ever happened in history that such a seven-eighths would permanently be permitted to wield seven-eighths of all political power? If we want approximate political equality, we must have approximate economic equality. If we attempt it otherwise, we shall be bucking against the law of gravitation. But when we consider what a long and sore struggle it cost to achieve political liberty; what a splendid destiny a true republic planted on this glorious territorial base of ours might bave; what a mission of liberty out country might have for all the nations mit may well fill the heart of every patriot with the most poioo'nant grief to think that this liberty may perish once more; that our birthright among the nations may be lost to us by out greed; and that already out country, instead of being the great incentive to political democracy in a Charles B. Spahr, "Distribution of Wealth in the United States. 'æ See also George K. Holmes. Political Science Quarterly, I893, p. 59 I.

other nations, is a heavy handicap on the democratic move, ment, an example to which the opponents of democracy abroad point with pleasure and which the lovers of popular liberty pass with averted face.

Our moral character is wrought out by choosing the right when we are offered the wrong. It is neither possible nor desirable to create a condition in which the human soul will hot bave to struggle with temptation. But there are conditions in which evil is so dominant and its attraction so deadly and irresistible, that no wise man will want to expose himself or his children to such odds. Living in a tainted atmosphere does hOt increase the future capacity of the body to resist disease. Swimming is hard work and therefore good exercise, but hOt swimming where the undertow locks the swimmer's limbs in leaden embrace and drags him downo We cannot conceal from ourselves that in some directions the temptations of modern life are so virulent that characters and reputations are collapsing all about us with sickening frequency. The prevalence of fraud and the subtler kinds of dishonesty for which we have invented the new terre "graft," is a sinister fact of the gravest import. It is hot merely the weak who fall, but the strong. Clean, kindly, religious men stoop to methods so tricky, hard, and rapacious, that we stand aghast whenever the curtain is drawn aside and we are shown the inside facts. Every business man who has any finer moral discernment will realize that he himself is constantly driven by the pressure of business necessity into actions of which he is ashamed. Men do hOt want to do these things; but in a given situation they have to, if they want to survive or prosper, and the sure of these crooked actions gives an evil turn to their life. If it were proposed to invent some social system in which covetousness would be deliberately fostered and intensified in human nature, what system could be devised which would excel our own for this purpose? Competitive commerce exalts selfishness to the dignity of a moral principle. It pits men against one another in a gladiatorial gaine in which there is no mercy and in which ninety per cent of the combatants finally strew the arena. It makes Ishmaels of our best men and teaches theln that their hand must be against every man, since every man's hand is against them. It makes men who are the gentlest and kindliest friends and neighbors, relentless taskmasters in their shops and stores, who will drain the strength of their men and pay their female employees wages on which no girl can live without supplementing them in some way. It spreads things before us and beseeches and persuades us to buy what we do not want. The showwindows and bargain-counters are institutions for the promotion of covetousness among women. Men offer us goods on credit and dangle the smallness of the first instalment before our eyes as an incentive to go into debt heedlessly. They try to break down the foresight and selfrestraint which are the slow product of moral education, and reduce us to the moral habits of savages who gorge to-day and fast to-morrow. Kleptomania multiplies. Itis the inevitable product of a social life in which covetousness is stimulated by all the ingenuity of highly paid specialists. The large stores have to take the most elaborate precautions against fraud by their employees and pilfering by their respectable customers. The finest hotels are plundered by their wealthy patrons of anything from silver spoons down to marked towels. Mter the annual Ladies' Day at a prominent club in Chicago over two hundred spoons and two hundred thirty-seven sprigs of artificial decoration, besides miniature vases and bric-à-brac, were lnissing, and that is always the case after Ladies' Day, and never at other rimes. At a reform school for boys two lads were pointed out to me as the sons of two men of great wealth. They had been placed there by their parents to cure them of their inveterate habit of stealing. Their fathers were in the United States Senate. Our business life borders so closely on dishonesty that men are hardly aware when they cross the line. It is a penal offence for a govemment officer to proft by a contract which he awards or mediates; in business lire that is an everyday occurrence. No wonder that our officials are corrupt when their corruption is the respectability of business life. Gambling is the vice of the savage. True civilization ought to outgrow it, as it has outgrown tattooing and cannibalism. Instead of that our commercial life stimulates the gambling instinct. Our commerce is speculative in its very nature. Of course risk is inseparable from human life. It is the virtue of the pioneer to take risks boldly. Every field sown by the fariner represents a certain risk. But the element of labor is the main thing in the farmer's work and that makes the process wholesome. In the measure in which productive labor is eliminated and the risk taken becomes the sole title to the profit gained, the transaction approximates gambling. Above the entrance of an Eastem penal institution the motto has been inscribed, "The worst day in the life of a young man is when he gets the idea that he can make a dollar without doing a dollar's worth of work for it." That is good sense, but how would that motto look on the walls of the New York Stock Exchange or the Chicago Produce Exchange? If a man buys stock or wheat on a margin and clears a hundred dollars, what labor or service has he given for which this is the reward? In what respect does it differ from crap-shooting in which a boy risks his pennies and uses his skill just like the speculator? In Europe, lotteries are state institutions and prized privileges of churches and benevolent undertakings. We have fortunately outlawed them in our country, but gambling is one of our national vices because our entire commerce is saturated 'ith the spirit of it. The social nature of man makes him an imitative creature. The instinct of imitation and emulation may be a powerful lever for good if individuals and classes set the example of real culture and refinement of manners and taste. But the processes of competitive industry have poured vast wealth into the lap of a limited number and ha'e created an unparalleled lavishness of expenditure which has nothing ennobling about it. Those who have to work hard for their money will, as a rule, be careful how they spend it. Those who get it without effort, will spend it without thought. Thus parasitic wealth is sure to create a vicious luxury, which then acts as a centre of infectioh for all other classes. Fashions operate downward. Each class tries to imitate the one higher up, and to escape from the imitation of those lower down. Thus the ostentation of the overful] purses of the predatory rich lures all society into the worship of false gods. It intensifies "the lust of the eye and the pride of life" unnaturally, and to that extent expels "the love of the Father," which includes the love of all true values. Any one can test the matter in his own case by asking himself how much of his money, his rime, and his worry is consumed in merely "keeping up with the procession," and is diverted frorn real culture to rnere display by the compulsion of social requirernents about him. The rnan who lives only on his labor is brought into social cornpetition with people who have additional incorne through rents and profits, and must break his back rnerely to keep his wife and children on a level with others. The very spirit of dernocracy which has wiped out the old class lines in rnodern life, rnakes the rivalry keener. In Europe a peasant girl or a servant forrnerly was quite content with the dress of her class and had no ambition to rival the very different dress of the gentry. With us the instinct of imitation works without a barrier frorn the top of the social pyrarnid to the bottom, and the whole process of consumption throughout society is feverishly affected by the aggregation of unearned money at the top. The elnbezzlernents of business men, the nervous breakdown of wornen, the ruin of girls, the neglect of home and children, are largely caused by the unnatural pace of expenditures. If the rich had only what they earned, and the poor had all that tbey earned, all wheels would revolve more slowly and life would be more sane. Industry and commerce are in their nature productive and therefore good. But in our industry a strong elernent of..rapacity vitiates the moral qualities of business life. A railway president in New York said to me- half in joke, of course: "The rnen who go down town on the Elevated at seven and eight o'clock really rnake things. We who go down at nine and ten, only try to take things away from one another." Supplying goods to the people is, of course, the main thing; but crowding out the other man, who also wants to supply thern, takes a large part of the rime and energy of

THE PRESENT CRISIS 2{5 9 business. Out competitive life bas so deeply warped our moral judgment that not one man in a thousand will realize anything immoral in attracting another man's customers. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's trade" is not in out decalogue. The saine instinct of rapacity cheats the consumer. They sell us fruit-jam ruade without fruit; butter that never saw the milk-pail; potted chicken that grunted in the barnyard; all-wool goods that never said "baah," but leave it to the buyer to say it. If a son asks "for bread, his father will not offer him a stone; but ground soapstone is freely advertised as an adulterant for flour. Several years ago the Secretary of Agriculture, on the basis of an extensive inquiry, estimated that thirty per cent of the money paid for food products in the United States is paid for adulterated or misbranded goods. 1 We are fortunate if the title of the food is false, but the food is wholesome. But when fruit flavors are ruade with coal-tar and benzoic acid, and when the milk for out children is preserved with formaldehyde, the rapacity becomes murderous. The life of a mother or a child may depend on the purity of a medicine administered at the critical stage of a disease; but we bave very little guarantee that out medicines are hot adulterated. In i9o4 the Board of Health in New York City had a list of about three hundred druggists and dealers who had attempted to sell spurious mixtures to the very officers  Senator McCumber, in a speech in the Senate, anuary 23, 19o6. He added that if we reduced the estimate to fifteen per cent tobe conservative, the amount wou]d be about $1,75o, ooo, ooo. To-day it wou]d be safely estimated at $3,000,000,000. Out people would then annually pay for fraudu]ent and adu]terated goods enough to pay the national debt thrice ver. We shall wait to sec how much permanent change the new Pure Food Law will make.

of the Board. Most of the patent medicines to whfch out people trust are cheap and worthless concoctions. Others are insidious conveyers of narcotic poisons which are intended to set up a morbid appetite in the consumers for the profit of the dealers. And if patent medicines were as healthgiving as they claire tobe, the very principle of patenting and withholding from general use a beneficent invention for the saving of human life would be a shameful confession of selfish greed. The liquor traffic presents a striking case of a huge industry inducing people to buy what harms them. It is militant capitalism rotting human lives and characters to distil dividends. In the atrocities on the Congo we have the same capitalism doing its pitiless work in a sale and distant corner of the wofld, on an inferior race, and under the full support of the government. The rapacity of commerce has been the secret spring of most recent wars. Speculative finance is the axis on which international politics revolve. The counts in the indictment against out marvellous civilization could be multiplied at pleasure. It is a splendid sinner, "magnificent in sin." The words which Bret Halte addressed to San Francisco in its eaflier days, characterize the whole of modern society:—

"I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard, high lust and wilful deeà» And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material."

It defrauds the customer who buys its goods. It drains and brutalizes the workman who does its work. It hunts the business man with fear of failure, or makes him hard with merciless success. It plays with the loaded dice of false prospectuses and watered stock, and the vaster its operations become, the more do they love the darkness rather than the light. It corrupts ail that it touches, — politics, education, the Church. For a profession to be "commercialized" means to be demoralized. The only realms of lire in which we are still glad and happy are those in which the laws of commerce are not practised. If they entered the home, even that would be hell. Industry and commerce are good. They serve the needs of men. The men eminent in industry and commerce are good men, with the fine qualities of human nature. But the organization of industry and commerce is such that along with its useful service it carries death, physical and moral. Frederick Denison Maurice, one of the finest minds of England in the Victorian Age, said, "I do not see my way farther than this, Competition is put forth as the law of the universe; that is a lie." And his friend Charles Kingsley added, "Competition means death; co6peration means lire." Every joint-stock company, trust, or labor union organized, every extension of government interference or government 0wnership, is a surrender of the competitive principle and a halting step toward co6peration. Practical men take these steps because competition has proved itself suicidal to economic welfare. Christian men have a stouter reason for turning against it, because it slays human character and denies human brotherhood. If money dominates, the ïdeal cannot dominate. If we serve mammon, we cannot serve the Christ.

We have purposely left to the last what properly comes The ut dermin first in any consideration of social lire. The family is the of the structural cell of the social organism. In it lives the power faraily.